


say yes we live uncertainly

by jolie_unfiltrd



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: And also capwidow, But also, Could be alternative canon, F/M, Feelings, I will forever ignore the end of Endgame so, Jolie's Quarantine Quick Fics, Pasta, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Pre-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Pre-Canon, and feelings, anyway, i have a lot of feelings about it, i love them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:33:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23430997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jolie_unfiltrd/pseuds/jolie_unfiltrd
Summary: She left her touches light and caressing, her words soft and gentle, she spoke to friends as friends and lovers as such and enemies not at all - though they were all-mixed, in her head. All viewed with red-tinted glasses - not the soft rose of new love, not the tinge of jealousy, not the haze of fear - but so red she feared the glasses would crack, the gloves would come off, and her tongue would reveal itself as a viper, at last. Forked and deadly and so pleasant, the way it shifts in her mouth to deliver insults and threats.Lovely in the way a snake is deadly, a storm wells in the distance - dark clouds building.She isn't fond of metaphors or poetry, so she's angry about being angry, too.---Post-Infinity War, Pre-Endgame; Natasha tries to cope with the loss. Steve is there, through the years.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 10
Kudos: 50





	say yes we live uncertainly

**Author's Note:**

> I know this isn't my usual, but this quarantine is doing silly things to my inspiration list right now - so I present, the first of Jolie's Quarantine Quick Fics - where i write for the fun of it while the world is a clusterfuck of weirdness and nothing makes sense anymore. But the flowers are blooming and the skies are blue and my pups are sleeping next to me and I'm grateful for all that is good in the world. (On that list: Captain America's ass). WHAT I AM HUMAN OKAY
> 
> (also anyone who can guess the song where the title is from wins a picture of my puppy)

She was angry. 

She was angry, and that was an understatement. 

She didn't know why or how, or from where this well-spring of hot fury sprang forth - but the anger burned in her, a devastating fire that threatened to scorch all she touched. 

So she left her touches light and caressing, her words soft and gentle, she spoke to friends as friends and lovers as such and enemies not at all - though they were all-mixed, in her head. All viewed with red-tinted glasses - not the soft rose of new love, not the tinge of jealousy, not the haze of fear - but so red she feared the glasses would crack, the gloves would come off, and her tongue would reveal itself as a viper, at last. Forked and deadly and so pleasant, the way it shifts in her mouth to deliver insults and threats. 

Lovely in the way a snake is deadly, a storm wells in the distance - dark clouds building. 

She isn't fond of metaphors or poetry, so she's angry about being angry, too. 

Natasha spent a lot of time being angry - a year, at the least. A year before she could look anyone in the eye without wondering, absently, if they'd coalesce into stone under her gaze. Before she braided her hair and watched the tendrils spiral as if they were snakes, emerging from her skull. 

It was easier, she would reason to herself, laying in bed and staring at the moon, feeling feverish in the middle of winter. Easier to be angry, to let every heartbeat fuel the fire, the low level of adrenaline enough to keep her boxing in the basement for hours, until her knuckles were bruised and the buzz in her veins was still relentlessly restless. 

Easier than despair, hopelessness; once she opens the door to mourning, it will never leave. She knows this, from years ago. 

And in the background, in the peripheral of her mind, she is constantly reminded that they have lost so many, lost so much, that they have _lost_. 

It is an unsettling feeling for one who was taught that losing meant death; but she has lost, and here she stands, wiping sweat from her brow and her cheeks, unwrapping her wrists as she steps down from the mat. 

Here she stands, where she does not deserve to stand, in the Avengers tower. 

Here she stands, when she does not deserve to stand, at all. 

(She'd thought she'd wiped the red from her ledger, and now her ledger accounts for half of the people on this planet.)

Steve hands her a water bottle and a towel, and they trade places. 

She is not the only one with anger issues, she thinks, watching as he pummels another punching bag into destruction. 

A year turns into one, then two. 

The anger fades into desolation. 

Mourning meant sitting on the roof of the tower, staring out at the moonlight, wondering how bad a person she was if she noticed that the stars shone brighter with less people on the planet. It meant concluding that she was a terrible person, and the exact brightness of the stars impacted that only a little. 

Mourning meant visiting the stones in New York, with all of the names - and immediately retreating. It was too peaceful, too nice. Too many old people with flowers, too many young widows, too many children - just, it was - too much. 

Mourning meant convincing Steve to take endless, meandering drives around the country, where he would tell her stories about Bucky from childhood, about Steve's own childhood, about traveling with the glittering and too-friendly chorus girls before Captain America became something more real. 

Mourning meant searching the globe for traces of Clint, for wondering if he was as lost as she was.

Mourning meant standing next to Steve at the Grand Canyon, as he told her all of the places he and Bucky had planned to visit together, pretending the tears on their faces were from the wind and the wind alone. 

(If she had thought time passed slowly when she raged, she could not have imagined the sluggishness of the world turning when she wept). 

The desolation fades into resolve, with the third year post-snap. 

And all the while, Steve is there. 

(She wants him. 

She wants him desperately, and even that is an understatement. 

Her touches had been light, her words the same level of friendly teasing that they always had been - but there was an undercurrent of longing, a deep river of wanting that she simultaneously wanted to lay bare to him and prevent him from ever seeing. The desire makes her hazy, turns her morning stretches languorous, when she knows he's watching. 

It's not that she's trying to tempt him, just to walk that fine line of finding herself and hurting herself that has always been her specialty. A little masochism never fucked anyone up, right? 

Especially not her). 

She would have thought that literal years on the run together would have made this smoother, the way they navigate around each other in the kitchen. 

Natasha stands on her tip-toes to reach for a box of noodles at the same time Steve needs to open the drawer on her left, nudging her hip to get her to budge over. Steve bends down to pull a pot from the back of the cabinet for his homemade sauce, and she nearly trips over his ankle as she steps across the tile for the wine opener. She spent years in ballet training and as an international spy, she scolds herself, before coming face first to Steve's chest once more. 

"Alright," Steve sighs, setting aside the ladle, "that's enough of that." He reaches for her shoulders and she only huffs as he picks her up, easily, placing her on the nearby countertop. 

"I blame you," she says, reaching for the wine glass he had thoughtfully placed next to her. "You're a bull in a china shop, but, you know. Captain America in a kitchen." 

"Says the spy," he replies in a reasonable tone of voice, smiling into his sauce. 

An indignant snort is beneath her, so she settles for chucking a breadstick at his head. 

He barks out a laugh, before turning around to brandish a ladle at her. "You know what, Romanoff?" 

"What?" she says, teasingly. She's not sure when a smile felt more natural, less like it was being carved out of stone. "What are you gonna do, Rogers?" 

He shrugs good-naturedly, tossing the towel over his shoulder as he returns to his sauce. Supposedly his ma's recipe, but something about it reminds Natasha of Bucky - that sizzle of basil in the pan, the garlic overlaid with the fresh tomatoes, the pancetta that will make the place smell like sauce for days, though she isn't one to complain. "Eat all of your popcorn." 

Natasha gasps dramatically. It was _specialty_ popcorn, special-ordered from this small place in Vermont on the first of every month - rosemary and parmesan, or lavender and honey, or marshmallows and little bits of dark chocolate. It was one of her many vices, but the only one for which she mailed in a special form each month because they don't do online delivery. 

"You wouldn't dare." She lightly swivels off of the countertop and lands on her toes, sidling over to him and slipping a butter knife between his ribs, her other hand wrapped around his throat, feeling his pulse jump and quicken at her presence. 

"Try me," he murmurs as he turns to look at her, a curious flush traveling up his jawline. She ignores the tendril of desire low in her belly, the whispered part of her that to wonder what it would be like. 

To try him. 

Natasha is an excellent liar. Always has been. Part of the territory, she reasons. 

So, when Pepper asked her what's between them, gesturing between the distant pair with her wine glass, at some glitzy party that they had been required to attend, she shrugged and said, blithely, nothing. 

When Tony, all exaggerated hand gestures and accusatory glares, dared to make a crude comment about the black widow's kiss as they eat breakfast together in the tower, she ignored him completely. 

But when Laura Barnes pulled her aside at the farmhouse, tucking her dark hair behind her ears and eyes far too serious for a woman who had dared Clint to chug his beer less than two minutes prior, and whispered, "I see the way you look at him," Natasha only quirked an eyebrow. "Like I want to fuck him?"

Laura offered a fond smile to her friend, pulling her in to a close embrace. "Like you want to keep him," she said, carefully.

Keep him.

What a funny concept for a girl who had never been allowed to keep anything.

The word is inherently too possessive, it tastes wrong in her mouth. Even her birthday is not hers to keep, her name, her hair - it is all a mirage.

Nothing is permanent.

Sometimes when she thinks, she is a little astounded at the space she has carved out for Steve in her life - in the years he has consumed, greedily. In the years that they've shared. 

In the home that she has built, with him. 

It is year three, and here they are. 

(Part of her, absentmindedly, wonders if the snap will be the new way that they measure time. Thousands of years past the birth of a Nazarene man, and they still measure time by his death. So why not the snap? 3 A.S. Tony would mock the initials, and that makes her like the idea all the more). 

Here they are: her hand wrapped around his throat, on her tiptoes to press against the planes of his body from behind, the dull knife pressing into hollow between his ribs. Her fingers on his pulse, her eyes locked on his dark, hooded gaze. 

"Try me," he murmurs again, voice hoarse as he lays down the ladle next to the stove, never taking his eyes from hers. A dare, a challenge - one she will not back down from, not this time. The blood thrums in her veins as she considers and immediately decides - she may have resisted, may have tried meditating away her desire, but at the end of the day, it is just the two of them, now. 

(And what is she supposed to do? Be celibate, or fuck someone else? It is unthinkable). 

It has been the two of them, and now, pressed into him, she can hardly think for the knowledge of where every plane of his body collides with her own. 

The staccato rhythm of her heart sounding in her ears, she rises up even further until she can almost - almost - press her lips against his. She abandons the butter knife and wraps her other arm around his broad shoulders, using them and her core to leverage herself up, enough to kiss him. 

He groans into her mouth and turns around, wrapping his arms around her waist and returning the kiss with fervor. 

(Years ago, she would have been afraid to show him all of her darkness, the dark tinge of anger in her statements, the coil of desire that made her at turns harsh and heathen, the quick lash of her tongue when she's hurt - but he'd been around for years, now, he'd seen it all. He'd stood by her through it all. 

So she gives and she takes, takes, takes). 

Steve lifts her back to the counter, one arm still firmly around her waist while his right hand wraps around her jaw, and lets out a small, helpless whimper when she reaches a hand to pull his hair, to pull his head back long enough for her to trace the angle of his neck with disarmingly soft kisses. 

She'd had dreams like this before, so realistic that she'd woken panting, one hand down the waistband of her sleep shorts and the other flung dramatically overhead, as if Steve himself had pinned it there - but she hadn't known the way he would hiss through his teeth when she traced her fingertips across his abdomen, or try to swallow a moan as she scraped her nails down the line of his back. He hadn't tasted like this, years ago, on that escalator, had he? Peppermint and basil and something so uniquely Steve that she presses herself even closer, wrapping her legs around his waist and kissing him so thoroughly that they must break away, panting. 

He presses his forehead to hers, face flushed with desire - and she finds she likes the power that comes with this, with dismantling Steve Rogers. 

(It is not that she forgets everything else, necessarily - only that the ever-present grief and anger seems to lessen when he's there). 

And the desire is all-encompassing, all-consuming, and - 

"Steve," she says, panting lightly, eyes darting to the stove. "The sauce." 

He grins, wickedly, a light in his eyes that she'd missed, from Before - "If you're thinking about the sauce, I must not be doing a good job of keeping your attention." 

She protests, laughing, and he winks and tells her the sauce will wait, it will simmer, and be all the better for the waiting. She rolls her eyes and kisses him breathless. 

Dinner isn't eaten until almost 2 am, while she's wearing his shirt, and he's wearing almost nothing, eating cold pasta with their fingers and snickering at the dumbstruck look on his face. 

She hates to admit it, but the sauce is better then, even cold, even much later. 

All the better for the waiting. 

Natasha isn't overly fond of metaphors, as a general rule - but that one, she likes. 

This one, she'll keep. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! As always, you can come fangirl with me at my tumblr: jolie_unfiltrd <3


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